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(CNN)Some time in May 2014, Paul Overby, an American writer in his 70's, disappeared as he was traveling between Khost in Afghanistan and North Waziristan in Pakistan -- a region rife with the Taliban and terror groups such as al Qaeda. He has not been heard from since. On Wednesday, his wife went public for the first time with his disappearance, providing a statement to CNN and other media outlets. . . Overby's wife, who asked not to be identified by name, last heard from her husband on May 16, 2014, as he was preparing to cross the border into...

Pair Are Plotting Attacks, Sources Say JIDDAH, Saudi Arabia, Aug. 27 – Two figures who have assumed critical roles in the al Qaeda hierarchy in recent months, including one reported dead by the Pentagon, are being sheltered in Iran along with dozens of other al Qaeda fighters in hotels and guesthouses in the border cities of Mashhad and Zabol, according to Arab intelligence sources.The two – Saif al-Adel, an Egyptian on the FBI's most-wanted list, and Mahfouz Ould Walid, also known as Abu Hafs the Mauritanian, whom U.S. officials reported had been killed near the eastern Afghan city of Khost...

Early evidence in the December 30 bombing that killed seven CIA agents suggests a link to Pakistan, two senior Afghan sources, including an official at their spy agency, told The Daily Beast. The pair said that U.S. has already taken a chemical fingerprint of the bomb used by a Jordanian double agent in the attack, and that it matches an explosive type used by their Pakistan equivalents, the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI. The bomb’s provenance was an immediate concern after the attack, which took place in a remote base in eastern Afghanistan called Camp Chapman, because of its...

Yet, of the Americans who died last week in the suicide bombing at the CIA’s most sensitive outpost in Afghanistan, it is the seventh whose presence has raised the most urgent questions as the US scrambles to repair — and avenge — the damage done to the hunt for Osama bin Laden. According to a security official in Kabul with close ties to the CIA, when Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi carried out his deadly mission at Forward Operating Base Chapman, he managed to kill the agency’s deputy head of station for the whole of Afghanistan. The senior agent was waiting...

Show availability of Iran for al Qaeda training, plotting. This week, prosecutors in New York introduced eight documents recovered in Osama bin Laden’s compound in Pakistan as evidence in the trial of a terrorism suspect. The U.S. government accuses Abid Naseer of taking part in al Qaeda’s scheme to attack targets in Europe and New York City. The files do not support the view, promoted by some in the Obama administration, that bin Laden was in “comfortable retirement,” “sidelined,” or “a lion in winter” in the months leading up to his death. Some of the key revelations in the newly-released...

KABUL, Afghanistan, Aug. 4, 2011 – A combined Afghan and coalition security force detained a Haqqani network leader yesterday during a security operation in the Sperah district of Afghanistan’s Khost province, military officials reported. The detained leader was responsible for directing more than 250 fighters, including Uzbek foreign fighters, in attacks against Afghan government officials and soldiers. He also planned and coordinated several attacks on the Sperah District Center. In other Afghanistan operations yesterday: -- In the Baghlan-e Jadid district of Baghlan province, an Afghan and coalition force detained a Taliban facilitator and an associate. The detained facilitator is linked...

WASHINGTON — On his second yearlong deployment to Afghanistan, Lt. Col. Daniel L. Davis traveled 9,000 miles, patrolled with American troops in eight provinces and returned in October of last year with a fervent conviction that the war was going disastrously and that senior military leaders had not leveled with the American public. Colonel Davis on patrol in Khost Province last August. Since enlisting in the Army in 1985, he said, he had repeatedly seen top commanders falsely dress up a dismal situation. But this time, he would not let it rest. So he consulted with his pastor at McLean...

The call from the Central Intelligence Agency came on a December afternoon in 2009 while Gary Anderson was skiing with his three children. It’s about your wife, the agency man said. Standing inside Eagle Rock ski lodge in Pennsylvania, Anderson pleaded for details. The CIA official said simply: Where are you? We’ll meet you. Anderson suspected dreadful news about Jennifer Matthews, his college sweetheart, his wife of 22 years and a CIA operative on assignment almost 7,000 miles away in Afghanistan. With several hours until the CIA meeting, Anderson and his three children — then 12, 9 and 6 —...

It could be said that the U.S. government can run by remote control. On the day that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab attempted to blow up a Northwest airline flight headed for Detroit, several key government players were on holiday and didn't immediately return to their posts in Washington, D.C. President Obama was on vacation in Hawaii, golfing and enjoying time with his family. He returned to the White House on Jan. 4. A source told CBS News that Leon Panetta, director of the CIA, was on holiday in Monterey, Calif. when Abdulmutallab was apprehended, and didn't return to CIA headquarters in...

US attack helicopters killed more than 30 Haqqani Network fighters inside Pakistan while repelling a cross-border attack. US forces struck at the Haqqani Network fighters on Friday after they attacked Combat Outpost Narizah, an Afghan base just eight miles from the Pakistani border in the district of Tani in Khost province. The Haqqani Network fighters were hit in the Taliban-controlled tribal agency of North Waziristan, which is just across the Pakistani border. "An air weapons team in the area observed the enemy fire, and following International Security Assistance Force rules of engagement, crossed into the area of enemy fire," the...

US soldiers beat back a massed attack by the Haqqani Network in the eastern Afghan province of Khost yesterday, killing 27 enemy fighters. The Haqqani Network fighters gathered near Combat Outpost Spera and prepared to open fire on the base "with small arms and rocket propelled grenade fire," Combined Joint Task Force - 101 stated in a press release. But the Haqqani Network fighters were observed as they moved into position to attack. "Both remotely piloted aircraft and strategically placed surveillance cameras identified the insurgent forces preparing to open fire with a mixture of small arms and rocket propelled grenades,"...

KABUL, Afghanistan – Seven U.S. troops have died in weekend attacks in Afghanistan's embattled southern and eastern regions, NATO said Sunday. Two servicemen died in bombings Sunday in southern Afghanistan, while two others were killed in a bomb attack in the south on Saturday and three in fighting in the east the same day, NATO said. Their identities and other details were being withheld until relatives could be notified. The latest deaths bring to 42 the number of American forces who have died this month in Afghanistan after July's high of 66. A total of 62 international forces have died...

SNIPPET: "Some comments • I have to assume that al-Balawi was thoroughly debriefed by al-Qaida before being sent on this mission, and I'm surprised no one has sought to correlate his "infiltration" of al-Qaida with Abu Yahya al-Libi's book released over the summer: "Guidance on the Ruling of the Muslim Spy" • See also: Al Qaida: Western Spies Multiply "Like Locusts"."

SNIPPET: "Hakeemullah Mehsud (left), the Leader of the Movement of the Taliban in Pakistan. and Humam Khalil Muhammed Abu Mulal al Balawi (right), the suicide bomber who carried out the attack at Combat Outpost Chapman in Khost, Afghanistan. The al Qaeda operative who killed seven US CIA operatives and guards, and a Jordanian intelligence official, was on a martyr's videotape with the leader of the Pakistani Taliban. Humam Khalil Muhammed Abu Mulal al Balawi, a Jordanian Islamist who was thought to have been turned against al Qaeda, appeared on a videotape with Hakeemullah Mehsud, the leader of the Movement of...

In terms of loss of life, the bombing of the CIA base in Khost, Afghanistan, may be the costliest mistake in the agency's history. So it's important to look carefully for clues about how it happened, and lessons for the future. CIA veterans cite a series of warning signs that the agency wasn't paying enough attention to the counterintelligence threat posed by al-Qaida. These danger signals weren't addressed because the agency underestimated its adversary and overestimated its own skills and those of its allies. The time to fix these problems is now — not with a spasm of second-guessing that...

American Forces Press Service WASHINGTON, Sept. 21, 2009 – Afghan soldiers and police, working with international troops, in recent days have detained insurgents in southern and eastern Afghanistan and seized large amounts of weapons and explosives, military officials reported. Yesterday, a joint force of Afghan and international troops detained several suspected insurgents after searching a series of buildings in Khost province and compounds in Kandahar province. The buildings in Khost were known to be used by a Haqqani terrorist cell responsible for distributing improvised explosive devices and IED-making material throughout the region. In a compound search north of Kandahar City,...

A combined Afghan and US strike force killed 18 Haqqani Network fighters during a raid on a "stronghold in the remote mountains" of Afghanistan's eastern province of Khost. The intelligence-driven raid, which took place on Aug. 4, targeted "a Haqqani commander responsible for facilitating foreign fighters, weapons, IEDs, and other explosive materials in the region," a press release by the International Security Assistance Force stated. The Haqqani commander was not named. The combined force took heavy fire from the Haqqani Network fighters as they advanced on the Haqqani Network's mountaintop base. A Haqqani suicide bomber unsuccessfully attempted to attack the...

Afghan officials say a suicide bomber blew himself up near a primary school in the southeastern province of Khost Sunday, killing at least seven people and wounding 36. Police say the dead included four children and two security personnel. Authorities say the bomber was attempting to attack a meeting of officials in the nearby district headquarters and detonated his bomb prematurely when he was challenged. Officials say U.S. troops were in the building, but were not injured

A three-man suicide team stormed the Khost provincial headquarters of Afghanistan's intelligence service earlier today, killing six intelligence and police officials and wounding seven. The three attackers, likely members of the al Qaeda-linked Haqqani Network, dressed National Directorate for Security uniforms and drove a car with Afghan National Police markings up to the main gate of the headquarters and launched their attack, according to a report from the Afghanistan NGO Security Office (ANSO). The attackers threw hand grenades at the guards at the main gate, and then moved onto the second gate. Two of the attackers then exited the vehicle...

AP NewsAlert - KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) - Afghan governor says militants try to storm US military base in eastern Afghanistan